Goodnight Doctor Watson
by wholockgoddess97
Summary: Sherlock Holmes is an evacuee from London, sent to the countryside to live with retired army veteran Doctor John Watson. Slowly, they form a firm friendship - that is, until Sherlock recieves a summons from his father back in London...


The doorbell rang just as John was passing through from the kitchen into his living room.

He frowned.

Not that there was anything new there. He hadn't done much smiling since he'd come back from the war, if he was perfectly honest – not because he was simply a miserable old git (although he suspected that was part of the problem), but because he felt that now, he was no better than any of the bloody refugees being brought into the countryside from all the big cities. He was helpless – he couldn't walk half a mile without having to stop to rest his damned leg. He'd tried to convince himself that was why he was now living in such a tiny, remote town; and for the most part, it was true. But somewhere, deep in the cobwebs of his mind, he knew that it was because there were less people to have to deal with, less people to ask him what had happened to his leg, and less people to call him a hero when he told them.

He was no hero. Office workers didn't get called heroes, and they were just doing their jobs, too.

The door rang a second time as he hobbled frustratedly towards it, his ears turning red. He sometimes wished they could have just left him there, in the dirt in the middle of no man's land. Of course his injuries weren't fatal – he could have bled to death, if he'd been left long enough, but because of the bloody 'no man left behind' rule which seemed to apply to just about everything, he'd been hauled out from the wreckage and shrapnel and dragged back to the trenches.

Sometimes he felt guilty for wishing things like that. People who hadn't wanted to die, people who had families to go back to, they had died horrific deaths out there on the battlefield, and he'd watched them. And now here he was, all limbs intact, albeit damaged, when there were others out there who'd had to have most of their amputated, following an explosion or something equally horrific. He didn't deserve the luxury of thinking such things.

Tugging the door open with a crack of peeling paint, he fixed his eyes upon a young woman standing in the doorway, years added onto her age by her untended hair and the bags under her eyes. She smiled tiredly, obviously under a lot of stress. It wasn't a hard deduction to make, considering that there was a group of about fifteen children standing behind her.

John's brow dropped even lower.

"Err, ah, good morning, Mister..."

"Watson, John Watson." He gave her a slight, empty smile, then his face fell back to its original cold, hard state. The young lady flipped through a stack of forms and paper in her arms, sheets and paper clips sticking out at all angles.

"Ah, yes, erm, Doctor John Watson, I've got you here," she murmured into her scarf as it flew up into her face, causing a single slip of crumpled paper to slip unnoticed from the pile and slide onto the floor. Pulling her scarf back into a more acceptable position around her neck, she gave him a quick smile, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear as she used her other hand to continue to rifle through the sheets.

John diverted his darkened gaze from the poor woman to the group of children behind her, most of whom had strayed away from the deteriorating garden wall and were now chatting amongst each other on the dusty gravel path. As he leaned on his cane to relieve some of the dull throbbing in his calf, a boy who couldn't have been more than eleven caught his eye, resting against the oak tree on the other side of the path with his eyes fixed on the group before him. It was obvious that he wasn't going to be joining in anytime soon – and from the way he was watching them, it didn't look like the normal type of interest boys his age usually displayed in other children.

Not meaning that he looked at them in a predatory fashion – he just looked at them with a sort of morbid fascination, as if they were merely specimens under a microscope, things to be studied rather than friends to play with. But they obviously hadn't noticed that he was doing it, so maybe that was all they were to him – just things to look at, but not to go near. Like exhibitions in a museum.

John blinked, then – and when he opened his eyes, the boy was still there, of course – but he was staring right at him. John started; his eyes were so blue, he could see that even from this distance. They stood out like striking aquamarine jewels against his impossibly pale skin, which was further framed by his messy mop of jet-black hair, too dark to be real on this impossibly white boy. His eyes bore into John, gleaming in the light of the warm autumn day; the best weather they would get before winter, now.

As John watched him watching him, he felt a sense of extreme discomfort come over him, and the hairs rose on the back of his neck – he knew it was all in his head, of course he did – but for a split second, he felt as if the boy had seen right through him, as if he were nothing more than a man made of glass. Disturbed, he blinked to break the contact, turning his head back to the lady in front of him, and rubbing the back of his neck uneasily.

But when he stole another glance at the boy, he was still observing him, a peculiar look plastered all over his face. John gulped, worrying at his collar. He wasn't easily flustered, and when he was, it was because of something he'd done himself – and yet here he was, suddenly intimidated by a child after spending years in the army, staring down the enemy with an emotionless expression.

He'd never felt so uneasy in all his life.

"Watson, of course!" The sound of the woman's voice made him jump, pulling him from the depths of the boy's eyes back into reality. He focussed on her, returning his face to a hard, frowning expression.

"Yes. Can I help you, at all?" he growled, resting back on his cane. He stuck out his lip as she handed him a letter and an envelope, re-tucking the offending hair behind her ear. She flashed him another quick, grim smile, and he knew what was coming before it was said.

"Sorry to keep you, Captain Watson. Would it be too much of a hassle if – "

"Not Captain. Doctor." He steeled his jaw and gripped his cane tighter, his face cold. She didn't seem to notice, glancing back at the crown of children to ensure that they were all still behind her.

"Of course, yes...sorry, yes, Doctor Watson," she babbled, turning back to him and shaking her head as if to clear her mind. "Yes, of course, sorry about that. Erm, would it be too much of a hassle if you were to look after one of the evacuees for a while? Of course, it's only temporary," she added hastily, as if someone had told her that he hated children. He raised an eyebrow, glancing down at the letter in his hand. 'To whom it may concern', it read, in a beautiful, neat little type, with a slight curl at the edge of every letter. "Erm...you didn't want to, ah, choose, did you? It's just, I'd heard that you'd been in the war – sorry – so we discussed having a more, err, difficult child – oh no, sorry, that's not what I meant; he's not difficult, it's just that he's less, erm, sociable that the other children, because he's sort of a sociopath. But of course, we wouldn't want to force anyone on you, we just sort of...ah..."

"Fine, okay," John sighed heavily, relieving the poor sod of her dragging speech (although she wasn't the only one to be relieved at the end of it). She straightened visibly, as though she'd come out of a shell after facing a particularly terrifying beast that could have exploded at any moment, and beamed at him.

"Really? I mean, are you sure, Doctor Watson?" she breathed happily, her hand faltering at the side of her face, ready and waiting to restrain that one strand of hair that refused to stay put. John shrugged, giving another sigh.

"Not like I have much choice, really," he smiled grimly, tucking the letter into the back pocket of his trousers. She chuckled, pushing the sheets in her arms back into a slightly more accessible pile of documents.

"Thank you, sir, that's such a relief, I must say. If you hadn't taken him, I'm not sure who else would have been able to cope." She paled suddenly, her eyes widening like a deer in the headlights. John raised an eyebrow. "Oh, sorry, I'm really not supposed to say stuff like that...but, I, um..."

"But it's true, though," John finished for her, his eyes flicking across the group, picking out faces and wondering who was to stay with him. The woman nodded in reply to his question, seemingly exhausted all over again. He fixed the frown back on his face, and with a pout just to add to the effect, he asked, "So, who's with me?" The woman pointed first down to the top of the letter still in his hand, at the name 'Sherlock Holmes', then over to the crowd just ahead of them.

But she wasn't pointing at the crowd. She was pointing a little away from the group of children, all chatting and laughing happily, to a boy who couldn't have been more than eleven, resting against the old oak tree with the bluest blue eyes you'd ever seen in your life. John exhaled deeply, resisting the urge to run a hand through his hair, thus showing his discomfort. Instead, he just nodded down at the ground, tearing his gaze away from the young boy who had now been identified as Sherlock Holmes, and bit the inside of his cheek.

"Okay. Well, he should probably come inside, then, unless children live in the great outdoors nowadays," he remarked half-heartedly, lifting his heavy head. The boy was back to staring at him, as though he knew that he was already at his destination. His suitcase has appeared at his feet.

"Well, thank you, Capt – I mean, Doctor Watson, this is a great help," the young lady smiled, offering her hand. John shook it as best as he could with a sheet of paper clutched in his own hand without creasing it too much, trying to maintain its legibility.

"Don't fret, ma'am," he replied gently, feeling that he had been too harsh with her. Why did he feel that he had to be so bloody cold and calculating all the goddamn time? Why couldn't he just smile like a normal person?

"Oh, please, call me Molly, Molly Hooper," she stuttered back, a wide grin on her blushing face. "You'll see more of me, I expect, I'm moving into the village too, taking in a couple of these children while they're here; but I'll probably stay after that too, depending on how this all goes, really. Oh, I'm babbling, I'll just go now – but thanks once again, for all this."

"Okay. I'll see you around then, Miss Hooper," he said as she turned to leave, finally giving in to the temptation to tuck her hair behind her ear for a third and final time.

"Sherlock, this'll be your accommodation until you can go back to London." John frowned as he noticed the way she'd addressed him, as though he were an adult himself. He raised an eyebrow and rolled his eyes with a sigh, muttering just so John could hear from his position on his porch, 'Well, I had assumed that that was the case, seeing as you took considerably longer talking to Doctor Watson than you did when you spoke with anybody else on the way here, and I'm the only one in this group who anyone seems to have a problem with, so having grouped these separate variables together, I had already come to that conclusion, but thanks for the heads-up anyway.' Grabbing his suitcase, he glided airily past Molly, who blinked once then shook her head again, ushering the rest of the children along the path like a herd of sheep. John waited until they were out of sight before turning to the boy, who was now standing before him with a look of depression and extreme boredom plastered all over his face. John donned the same expression.

"Well, shall we?" Sherlock asked in a mildly condescending tone, an eyebrow raised loftily. John stuck out his lip, observing the boy for a moment, trying to figure out exactly what it was that made this boy so different to all the rest, then lifted his chin a little and stepped to the side for him to enter, his cane clattering on the drain next to the door as he did so, watching the boy's thin, wiry frame sweep gracefully through the door and stop in the hallway expectantly, his head cocked in John's direction. He blinked, then repeated, "Shall we?" Stepping into the doorframe and pulling the door shut behind him, John muttered to himself, 'We shall.'

And so it was in this way that John came to meet the young boy who, unbeknownst to the army doctor, would later turn his life around.


End file.
